


Blossom Resurgam

by burglebezzlement



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Blossom Backstory, Family Secrets, Gen, Jewelry, Post-Fire Rebuilding, Spoilers through S1, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-18 11:23:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11289738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: Cheryl selects her new iconic brooch.





	Blossom Resurgam

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thesleepingsatellite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesleepingsatellite/gifts).



After the fire, Penelope and Cheryl move in with Nana Rose and her caretaker, down at the gatehouse on the far side of the Blossom estate. It’s just as Cheryl remembers it from when she and JJ were children and stayed with Nana Rose while their parents were away on business. 

Nana Rose’s caretaker sleeps in Jason and Cheryl’s old bedroom, the room next to Nana Rose, and Penelope Blossom claims the best guest-room.

Cheryl’s new bedroom is up under the eaves. The beds are the twin beds Cheryl and Jason once shared, covered with the same matching chenille spreads. Her new windows look out towards the Sweetwater River, sparkling innocently in the distance.

* * *

After the police and the arson investigators are gone, Cheryl returns to Thornhill. 

It’s smaller than she remembers, the walls unstable and sooty-black. She loses her way in the once-familiar hallways before finding the debris that used to be her bedroom. The room is less burnt than some other parts, the satin of her headboard stained and scarred but still defiantly crimson in the rubble.

Cheryl finds the charred remains of her jewelry box in a corner, under a beam. Gold flashes in the cinders, the sparkle of gems only partially dimmed by the flame. She collects them in handfuls, ash and char mixing with silver and platinum.

Back at the gatehouse, Cheryl hides the jewelry in a loose board in the window seat in her bedroom. Every time she opens her hiding place, she can smell the smoke.

Veronica lends her an ultrasonic jewelry cleaner, silver polish, a troy weight scale. “Everything the modern heiress needs when deciding to sell her jewels, girl,” she says.

Once everything is as clean as Cheryl’s tools can make them, she puts the gifts JJ gave her in a special place, to give to JJ’s children one day. 

The rest — everything from Clifford and Penelope — the rest can go.

* * *

Riverdale has one jewelry shop, downtown, across from the building where the Lodges now reside. The swirling lettering on the awning says Antonio’s House of Gems. Everyone who knows jewels just knows the jeweler as Tony, though. He sells the occasional bagatelle to tourists visiting for maple sapping season, but he specializes in estate pieces. His family has bought and resold jewels from Lodges and Blossoms and Coopers and all the rest of Riverdale’s finest since the town was founded. Legend has it that his family bought Lavinia Blossom’s jewels, giving the Blossom brothers the capital needed to found their maple groves.

Cheryl smiles brightly as she steps up to the counter. “I’m here to talk business,” she tells Tony. She’s got the tangled remains of her parents’ gifts in her handbag.

“Cheryl!” Tony smiles. “Darling, it’s lovely to see you.”

He settles Cheryl on the couch he saves for special customers, and gives her a cup of hazelnut cappuccino and an oversized book on Madeline Albright’s brooch diplomacy. “You look through that for inspiration,” he says. “Let me get rid of these tourists and then we’ll talk.”

Once the tourists are finally gone, Tony flips the sign on the door to Closed and beckons for Cheryl to come up to the counter.

“I’m here to sell,” Cheryl says.

“Heard something about that.” Tony’s face stays impassive, like he doesn’t care. It’s refreshing, after the way everyone’s been caring so hard about everything. Cheryl hesitates for a moment, and then brings out the first piece, a ruby tennis bracelet her father gave her for her fourteenth birthday. 

The work through the pieces, one by one. Tony makes offers on some, and Cheryl raises him, talks him into a deal. Thanks to Veronica’s loupe, she has a pretty good idea of what the gems are worth. 

Others, he recommends taking elsewhere — to a jewelry shop over in Sunnyside, and to a specialty estate jewelry shop in New York City. “I couldn’t give you what some of these are worth,” he says, packing a diamond pin into a soft, velvet bag.

The diamond pin was a gift from her father. It’s worth nothing to Cheryl. But the money it brings — that might be needed.

“The other order of business,” Cheryl says, once they’ve completed the deals she can make today. “I need a new power brooch.”

Tony nods. “Always a wise move,” he says. “A good brooch can open doors.” He reaches down below the counter and pulls out a tray of pins, sparkling in the lights.

Cheryl rules out everything in the first tray at a glance. “I said a power brooch, not a pin for Nana Rose,” she snaps.

Tony raises one eyebrow, and starts pulling out boxes. There’s enamel and platinum, Beaux Arts pieces, contemporary work from all over the world. Gems of all colors, turquoise, amethyst, sparkling champagne diamonds and dull jet set in hand-worked silver. The shapes are varied, too, from abstract designs to traditional pieces to whimsical animals set with flawless stones. 

Nothing feels right. These brooches are at least of power-brooch quality, but none of them reach the level of iconic.

When Cheryl says as much, Tony shows her more spider brooches, including one set with a black opal flashing with red and green fire. 

“No opals,” Cheryl says. The opals in her jewel box cracked in the heat. This time around, she wants something that can stand up to the flame. 

“It could always be reset with a new stone,” Tony says, but he’s already repacking the piece as he says it. “Let me look in back.”

When he comes back, a few minutes later, he has just one box. It’s dusty and dirty, but when he opens it, the piece inside sparkles like it’s just been polished. 

This one — Cheryl touches it, and there’s a tingle in her blood, like recognizing like.

The brooch is in the shape of a bird, rising up from a bed of flames depicted in rubies and topazes and yellow diamonds. The bird is formed from a flawless sapphire, the blue of the hottest part of a flame. It seems to glow in the light when Cheryl moves it from side to side. 

“Not exactly a subtle piece,” Tony says.

Cheryl ignores him. Subtlety’s overrated. Suitable for Coopers and Andrews. Not for Blossoms.

She turns the brooch over. There’s a set of initials, scratched into the back by an inexpert hand. LB.

Cheryl looks up at Tony. “Lavinia Blossom?”

“Could be.” Tony shrugs. “I don’t remember buying it. Before my time. It was all the way in the back.” He frowns. “Actually, I’m not sure I’d ever seen it before.”

The hair on the back of Cheryl’s neck prickles. There were stories they learned, she and JJ, when they stayed over with Nana Rose. Stories about Lavinia Blossom — who she was. What she’d done for power, real power, to establish her family. The price she’d paid when brother killed brother.

The brooch feels right in Cheryl’s hands, like it’s meant to be there. A phoenix, rising from the ashes, like the new Blossom family she plans to build for JJ and Polly’s children. The new future she can make.

“I’ll take it,” she says.


End file.
